"Pegasus!" he called in to Charley.
"You stick to your importing, Henry," retorted his gay young daughter, "and leave the book larnin' to mother and me."
Henry Kemp, suddenly serious, strolled over to his wife again. He lowered his voice. "About nine o'clock, anyway, can't we? Eh, Belle?"
"Not before nine-thirty. You know how mama——"
Henry sighed, resignedly. He stood a moment, balancing from heel to toe. "Lot's a peach, that's what she is," he confided irrelevantly to his wife. He puffed a moment in silence, his eyes squinting up through the smoke. "And it's a damn shame, that's what. Damn shame."
He picked up the discarded newspaper and seated himself in the buffalo chair. The buffalo chair was a hideous monstrosity whose arms, back, and sides were made of buffalo horns ingeniously put together. Fortunately, their tips curved away from the sitter. The chair had been presented to old Isaac Thrift by some lodge or real estate board or society. It was known to the family as Ole Bull. The women never sat in it and always warned feminine callers away from it. Its horns had a disastrous way with flounces, ruffles, plackets, frills. It was one of those household encumbrances which common sense tells you to cast off at every housecleaning and sentiment bids you retain. Thus far sentiment had triumphed on Prairie Avenue. Once you resigned yourself to him Ole Bull was unexpectedly comfortable. Here Henry Kemp sat reading, smoking, glancing up over the top of his paper at the women folk of his family—at his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law, thoughtfully through the soothing haze of his cigar. He pondered on many things during these family Friday evenings, did Henry Kemp. And said little.
The conversation was the intimate, frank, often brutal talk common to families whose members see each other too often and know one another too well. Belle to Lottie, for example:
"Oh, why don't you get something a little different! You've been wearing blue for ten years."
"Yes, but it's so practical; and it always looks well."
"Cut loose and be impractical for a change. They're going to wear a lot of that fawn colour this spring—sand, I think they call it.... How did Mrs. Hines get along with that old taffeta she made over for you?"